Take-Two makes round of layoffs, claims impact on dev teams is ‘minimal’

Take-Two has reportedly laid off staff at several divisions including its indie publishing label Private Division.

The Rockstar and 2K Games owner announced last month that was planning some layoffs as part of a $50 million “cost reduction program”.

And according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, the cuts have today hit staff at Private Division and other Take-Two business units.

Private Division is the publisher of titles including the Kerbal Space Program franchise, The Outer Worlds and OlliOlli World. It also has unannounced projects in development with Moon Studios, Evening Star and Yellow Brick Games.

In a statement, Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis said the cuts “will better align our organization with our long-term priorities” and claimed that the impact on dev teams is “minimal.”

The company said last month that the cost reduction program would include “personnel, processes, infrastructure, and other areas, and will primarily focus on corporate and publishing functions”.

And in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said the publisher wasn’t planning a “broad-based reduction” in its workforce.

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“We continue to support and build our development teams, and where we have overhead, we have to be very diligent about looking at the overhead,” he said.

“We don’t expect any kind of broad-based reduction in force. We are going department by department and trying to drive efficiency.”